Friday, September 06, 2013

B'nai Mitzvah Redux

According to a new Reform effort the key to stopping parents
from quitting the synagogue once their kids become Bar and Bat Mitzvah (“Repositioning
Bar Mitzvahs to End Drain.” Wednesday, September 4, 2013) is to get “the
children to spend less time learning Hebrew and memorizing prayers, and more
time working as a group on sustained ‘social action’ projects.” Seriously? If
my goal is feeding people (the example offered in the article), wouldn’t the
thousands of dollars I spend on synagogue membership be better spent actually
feeding people? I’m sorry, but if you want liberal Jewish kids to stay Jewish
you have to focus on the Jewish not
the liberal.

Bar and Bat Mitzvah aged children are natural
revolutionaries. If you want them to be Jewish you have to show them that
Judaism is revolutionary. Teach them about Abraham shattering his father’s
idols. Teach them how Abraham’s argument with God over Sodom was a battle of
justice against power, and Abraham/justice won! Show them how living Jewishly is
an ongoing struggle against idols and for justice.

Show them how keeping kosher—boldly redefined as lifting all
their consuming to the highest ethical, moral, and environmental values they
can muster, and then striving to go even higher—is a way to battle the
consumerist culture and corporate class system that is destroying persons and
planet. Show them (ala Levinas) how unplugging from the Internet on Shabbat and
joining with family and friends to play and talk face to face is an act of
radical resistance against the facelessness that defines American life and
blinds us to the exploitation and demonization of the Other. Show them (ala
Levi Strauss) how authentic Torah study teaches them how to deconstruct all
texts (from newspapers to advertisements) to see what is really being said.
Teach them that Jews question, doubt, and argue, and that these are our
David–stones used to topple the corporate and statist Goliaths that turn all
beings into commodities, and show them how to use Jewish tradition to free
themselves and others from the narrows of Pharonic slavery and into the
terrible desert of freedom, and toward the messianic redemption of a global
promised land.

Giving our children less Judaism isn’t going to help their
parents agree to pay for more dues. Parents will pay for those things that add
value to their children’s lives and futures. If Judaism can’t do that, not only
should parents leave, but all of us should get out as well.

Unfortunately, this is yet another example of the clueless disconnect between many professional Jews (Jewish clergy, educators, movement staff etc.,) and most non-Orthodox Jews in North America.

And as sad is that these folks (professional Jews) are once again in the midst of fulfilling the axiom of "never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity (h/t Abba Eben Z'l)" to take advantage of the fact that there are more Jews in the pews during the High Holidays than at any other time during the year.

That opportunity lost would be to cast a meaningful and compelling vision for a relevant, practical application oriented non Orthodox Judaism; one that actually meets us where we experience our lives in 21rst century North America.

Oh well....

L'shana Tova U'm'tuqa, to all of us a good and sweet new year as well as the the strength, courage, grace, wisdom and support to face and deal with what isn't.

The problem may be a little bit more nuanced than is being expressed. Or those Rabbi's who suggested this are clueless to children and their motivations.Bar/Bat Mitzah becomes all consumming. All those lessons, classes and papers to write. What average 12 year old wants to spend 3 days a week doing intensive anything. We aren't the only ones who go through this: Catholics make their kids go through 2-3 days a week of classes before their Holy Communions and those poor babies are in second grade. and, they don't have to give a speech!The problem may just be too much of a good thing for a defined purpose: this right of passage has a definite beginning and an end. And the end is like being released from a prison sentence.Maybe people would keep going if Bar/Bat Mitzvah was seen as a beginning instead of an end. Get rid of the parties and just call people up to read.Then keep the learning going on without turning it into a torture session. We don't need to redefine Judaism and make it Liberal Christianity: we need to take a breath and enjoy being Jewish.